Macron hack shakes up final countdown to vote

France fears a repeat of the situation that hurt the Clinton campaign in the US – but it may not be as bad as first thought.

Many had feared this was coming.

For months, pundits and journalists worried over the possibility that a strategically timed leak could destabilise France’s election, a replay of the obsessively covered disclosures that some Americans blame for scuppering Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and which others fear are sapping popular faith in Western democracy.

Yesterday, with only minutes left before France’s presidential campaign duel was due to cease fire for the weekend, it came.

Well, maybe it did. Or not. It’s hard to tell with so little time to evaluate the mass of material suddenly leaked online. And that might be the point.

All that can be said with much certainty is that someone on 4chan – an internet message board known for, among other things, elaborate hoaxes and political extremism – posted links to a large set of data purportedly taken from the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the youthful centrist politician who is tipped to beat far-right politician Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election, which starts today.

Macron’s campaign swiftly confirmed that several officials had had their email inboxes pillaged and that at least some of the messages, financial data, and bookkeeping published was genuine.

The timing of the leak could be seen as either idiotic or inspired.

The documents’ release just before France entered a roughly two-day-long media blackout – during which politicians, journalists and even ordinary citizens are legally required to pull back from any public election talk – means that the leak may have very little impact beyond the overheated world of Twitter and Reddit.

On the other hand, the publication just before France’s media and political machinery shut down for the weekend might mean that talk of the leak – regardless of its veracity – will dominate dinner table conversations as French voters make up their minds.

French officials scrambled to put a lid on the highly unusual situation.

Soon after the release, the electoral commission issued guidance asking French publications to refrain from covering the leak. ‘‘Free and fair elections are at play,’’ it said, adding that there could penalties, even criminal ones, for rebroadcasting forged documents.

That did little to cool the feverish coverage in many corners of social media, where far-right supporters duelled with academics and journalists over the meaning of the leak.

One question being asked is how many of the documents are genuine. In an email, Macron’s campaign said fakes had been interspersed with real documents. But it offered no examples, and had only recently insisted that none of its staffers had been hacked – an embarrassing claim in retrospect.

On the other hand, 4chan was only a couple of days ago at the origin of a crude, albeit widely disseminated, forgery purporting to show that Macron had an offshore bank account in the Caribbean.

The confusion and uncertainty generated by these stunts may be precisely the point. With interest in hacking and leaks at fever pitch, almost any claim, even an anonymous If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the US presidential election. one (and even one published on a forum notorious for fakery) is enough to act as a kind of internetwide fire alarm, soaking up coverage and attention while generating little more than smoke.

Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead over Le Pen in polls yesterday. They show him winning with about 62 per cent of the vote.

Macron’s campaign had previously complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.

On April 26, the team said it had been the target of attempts to steal email credentials dating back to January, but that the perpetrators had failed to compromise any campaign data.

The Kremlin has denied it is behind any such attacks, even though Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.

Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said his review indicated that APT 28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak. He cited similarities with US election hacks that have been previously attributed to that group.

APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of Macron’s political movement, En Marche!, which it likely used to send tainted emails to hack into the campaign’s computers, Kremez said.

‘‘If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the US presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,’’ he said.

France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by accusations of manipulation through cyber hacking.

US intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the hacking of parties tied to Clinton to influence the election on behalf of her Republican rival Donald Trump.

Yesterday, as the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around social media, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front party, tweeted: ‘‘Will Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?‘‘ Macron spokesman Sylvain Fort, in a response on Twitter, called Philippot’s tweet ‘‘vile’’.

Ben Nimmo, a British-based security researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council think tank, said initial analysis indicated that a group of US far-right online activists were behind early efforts to spread the En Marche! documents via social media. They were later picked up and promoted by core social media supporters of Le Pen in France.

The hashtag #MacronLeaks was first spread by Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump activist whose Twitter profile identifies him as Washington, DC bureau chief of the farright activist site Rebel TV, according to Nimmo and other analysts tracking the election.

Posobiec could not immediately be reached for comment.